Crafting pedagogy, outside the Classroom
First published in FuturArc. 2017 (Mar-Apr): 86-89.
Experiential pedagogy entails the making of meaning from direct experiences, through reflection on doing or action[1].
The built environment, a constant interface in every aspect of our lives, presents a compelling medium to offer such experiences. The act of living and experiencing has an intangible powerful impact of shaping the user’s nous and identity. Thus, the design of spaces, especially those for education, can go beyond merely providing light, bright and airy environments[2]. They can be designed to, in fact, become virtuoso agents of pedagogy in themselves.
This commentary explores some of the themes that various built environments offer through their designs to enable this premise of experiential pedagogy.
A Design Build Research course in action
Built environment as a medium of active learning
Design of the built environment can provide students with circumstances that evoke curiosity and create an ambience for direct engagement to learn in action3. The design of spatial elements and their presentation allow students to interact with them and draw active associations. Such active associations with contextual subject matter enhance fundamental comprehension and future applications. The success of enabling these active associations hinges on creating a visibility of the building elements and systems.
Shenyang Architectural University Campus
Project Location Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, China
Year of Completion 2004
Site Area 3 hectares
Project by Turenscape & Peking University Graduate School of Landscape Architecture4
When tasked to design the new campus for the Shenyang Architectural University on an existing paddy field, the landscape designers, Turenscape, used this as an opportunity to retain the productive landscape and double it as an educative landscape within which the built facilities of the university are ensconced. This gesture made the process of agriculture transparent to the urban students; the trend amongst whom is to aspire for lucrative livelihoods detached from the soil. The live productive nature of the landscape allows participation and draws both students
and faculty into an active dialogue of sustainable development and food production that goes beyond the theoretical and speculative realms of the classrooms. The landscape is an active test bed for students to explore and imbue the question of food production within the present paradigmsof urbanisation. Their attachment to this theme is strengthened further as they also manage the land and soil quality[5].
Net-Zero Energy Building at the School of Design and Environment (NZEB@SDE)
Project Location Singapore
Year of Completion End 2018
Built Area 8,514 square metres
Project by Serie + Multiply Pte Ltd with Surbana Jurong Consultants Pte Ltd
The design for NZEB@SDE at the National University of Singapore not only succeeds in making the building systems and elements visible to the users, but also enhances the users’ engagement and association with them by creating and utilising several living test beds. This is of particular interest as the building is designed to achieve a net-zero energy target and each of these architectural and engineering systems works in tandem to deliver the high performance targets. The building shall be a tutor in itself. Students and researchers will be able to alter the design of certain elements, like the panels on the eastern and western façade screens with experimental modules of their own design, and thereafter measure the impact on the various parameters. Others like the rainwater conveyance system, integrated within the landscape, should exhibit the cleansing character of bio-retention basins. During and after a rain event, students will be able to view water run-off being conveyed through these basins and welling out as clean water into a pond around a student’s plaza.
Façade test-beds in NZEB@SDE
NZEB@SDE also attempts to influence another integral part of education—that of nurturing behaviour. In a paper published in 1975, J.D. Hoover postulated that experiential learning should involve more than cognitive learning to include the learning of behaviours[6]. For NZEB@SDE, changing the user’s perception and behaviour is paramount as it directly affects the performance of the building’s systems, in particular the stringent energy budget. There are several innuendoes
in the design of the spaces and systems, which challenge certain conventional behavioural tendencies of everyday lives, some of which are detrimental to the cause of energy conservation. For instance, classrooms and studios have been designed with an innovative hybrid cooling system, which will provide optimal thermal comfort to users without overcooling the space to necessitate wearing jackets, as prevalent in present-day classrooms. Through these gestures, NZEB@SDE aims to develop a symbiotic relationship between the building and its users, wherein the latter can benefit from interacting with the building systems whilst their behaviours can also affect the performance of the former’s systems and spatial comfort.
Built environment which Create Connections
Conventional classroom-bound education tends to impart knowledge within insulated silos detached from the existence and realism of the immediate communities and ecosystems. Knowledge garnered thence is meant to empower us to influence and shape these same communities and the larger ecosystem. It could thus be critical that these learning spaces be better connected to them. Drawing tangible and visible links between academic material and their local milieu can make the classrooms and the communities more meaningful to each other.
Bridge School
Project Location Pinghe, Fujian, China
Year of Completion 2009
Built Area 240 square metres
Project by Li Xiaodong Atelier[7]
Small yet modern in design, the main bridge structure strategically assorts within itself spaces and elements that provide physical and metaphorical connections to its context. Suspended and running below the main structure is a small bridge, which establishes a connection across the creek for the two parts of this remote village. The main structure above holds the other functional spaces—a public library and classrooms. They enable the villagers to connect to their historical past whilst becoming cognizant of the frantic pace of current developments beyond the village. These spaces also open up to link to public plazas on each end and provide a larger gathering space for community programmes. The school has been able to invigorate the milieu of this remote village through the spaces it offers and the functions they enable[7].
New Jindai Elementary School
Project Location Chongqing, China
Year of Completion 2011
Built Area 5,000 square metres
Project by TEKTAO; Tongji University[8]
This project was part of the rehabilitation effort after the severe 2008 earthquake.
The design team, in consultation with the local communities, crafted a brief where the school building would become more than an agglomeration of classrooms. The new premise, designed around a preserved functional terraced agricultural plot, contains a strong central theme of sustainability, which includes a passive HVAC system that uses stable ground temperatures to condition the classroom buildings; terraced wetlands that treat rainwater for further use; and other passive design features that are comparatively lower in cost yet high in impact. The school curriculum uses its context to foster learning experiences like planting, harvesting and cooking as well as educating the students about the passive design features. Such connections strengthen the students’ awareness of their surroundings and their sustenance. The school encourages these same students to spread this knowledge to their families and the larger community. The elementary school is making a strong tool out of its rehabilitated context to further the cause of educating beyond the school to a larger needful community[8].
Built Environment to Facilitate Exchange and Participation
An essential aspect to facilitating pedagogy through the built environment is creating large flexible spaces that provide for informal occupation throughout the day. Such spaces allow the users to invest action and designate impromptu functions to them. They become fertile social epicentres that encourage informal exchanges, coalition of ideas, spontaneous conversations and voicing of opinions[3]. They also encourage occupants to participate, observe and collaborate—qualities that are critical to working as part of and for a greater community.
Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne (MSD)
Project Location Melbourne, Australia
Year of Completion 2014
Built Area 15,772 square metres
Project by John Wardle Architects; NADAAA[9]
The various programme spaces are stacked and arranged around a central atrium hall that facilitates and encourages a multitude of informal activities and occupation throughout the day. Students and faculty stream in and out through corridors overlooking this central space. The walls along the corridors serve as display panels exhibiting student works. In doing so, these corridors become an extension of the central space. It allows the classrooms and the studios to spill over, enabling a continuum of space and dialogue from the confines of the classrooms to the more informal and spontaneity of the central hall. Such informal participations, either in the
form of conversations and dialogues with peers or mere viewing of their works, help to broaden the pedagogical discourse within the school.
Net-Zero Energy Building at the School of Design and Environment (NZEB@SDE)
The main plaza and the Forum in NZEB@SDE
NZEB@SDE also builds upon this need for informal dialogues and visual associations with the juxtapositions of its different volumes to create shared spaces in the form of plazas, terraces and corridors. These function in a manner similar to that of MSD’s, with opportunities for several informal gatherings. This theme is further strengthened as the main plaza becomes the focal point of the connection to the school’s existing blocks, allowing it to serve both the new and old premises together. The main plaza is extended vertically to a suspended volume above it called the Forum, which is meant as a space for presentation and crit sessions of student works. Encased in glass, it allows for a dramatic visual experience where students present their work to a larger audience beyond the room.
Learning while Building
Akin to the radical education system of Finland, which is moving away from the notion of subjects to a topic-based learning (where a singular topic engages various subjects simultaneously, including vocational skills), the before narrated themes of a built pedagogy have found a culmination in nascent initiatives like the Design Build Research (DBR) for architectural designers, based in Vancouver, Canada. Learning is imparted through actual design-build projects (of varying scales) instead of courses. Students work with mentors on live projects for the community and are involved in all aspects and processes of a typical project—from design conceptualisation through to its execution. DBR aims to foster a design aptitude by nurturing the innate creativity of individuals and enabling them with the skills to realise their own designs. It also helps to establish an important missing link in traditional teaching—a constant dialogue with the community i.e., the majority of people who will actually be using these built structures[10].
Architecture embedded with these themes can provide the platforms for engagement and create stimuli to induce consciousness and evoke curiosity amongst the users; both of which are powerful avenues to help the users make meaning from direct experiences and associations, thus enabling experiential pedagogy.
Bibliography:
First Nations Pedagogy Online. [Online] 2009. http://
firstnationspedagogy.ca/experiential.html.
Frearson, Amy. Well-designed schools improve learning
by 25 percent says new study. Dezeen. [Online] January 2, 2013. http://www.dezeen.com/2013/01/02/poor- school-design-can-affect-learning-says-new-study/.
Russell, William Cassell and Jonathan. Architecture and pedagogy: The Melbourne School of Design. Architecture AU. [Online] January 5, 2015. http:// architectureau.com/articles/architecture-pedagogy/.
ASLA 2005 Professional Awards. American Society of Landscape Architects Inc. [Online] 2005. https://asla.org/ awards/2005/05winners/090.html.
Shenyang Architectural University Campus. Turenscape. [Online] http://old.turenscape.com/English/projects/ project.php?id=324.
C.J. Whitehead & J.D. Hoover. Simulation Games and Experiential Learning in Action, Volume 2. s.l.: Reprinted from Bernie Keys Library (11th ed.), 1975.
School Bridge / Li Xiaodong Atelier. ArchDaily. [Online] Jaunary 5, 2010. http://www.archdaily.com/45409/ school-bridge-xiaodong-li.
New Jindai Elementary School / TEKTAO. ArchDaily. [Online] May 20, 2011. http://www.archdaily. com/136017/new-jindai-elementary-school-tektao.
Melbourne School of Design University of Melbourne / John Wardle Architects + NADAAA. ArchDaily. [Online] April 23, 2015. http://www.archdaily.com/622708/ melbourne-school-of-design-university-of-melbourne- john-wardle-architects-nadaaa.
Ingalls, Julia. The school of helpful knocks: the experiential pedagogy of Design Build Research. Archinect. [Online] October 21, 2015. http://archinect.com/features/ article/139051283/the-school-of-helpful-knocks-the- experiential-pedagogy-of-design-build-research.
